1. Technical Field
The technology disclosed herein relates to image recording apparatus, image recording system, and image recording method.
2. Background Information
A conventional recording apparatus adds identification information indicating the shooting angle when an image is shot from multiple angles. For example, JP-H7-250350A (called “Patent Document 1” hereinafter) discloses a recording apparatus. The recording apparatus is configured of an input unit, an encoding unit, a multiplexing unit, an identification code generating unit, and a code adding unit. The input unit is configured of an image input unit. The image input unit inputs pieces of image data obtained by shooting images from multiple angles. The encoding unit encodes the image data obtained by the input unit on a shooting angle-by-shooting angle basis. The multiplexing unit is configured of a multiplexer. The multiplexer multiplexes the encoded data obtained by the encoding unit on a shooting angle-by-shooting angle basis, and outputs the multiplexed data as a sequence of compressed and encoded data. The identification code generating unit generates an identification code for each shooting angle of the image data. The code adding unit adds the identification codes obtained by the identification code generating unit to the respective pieces of encoded image data for each of the shooting angles.
The conventional recording apparatus merges image data which is shot from multiple angles into a single file and records the file. Specifically, the conventional recording apparatus records the image data from multiple angles sequentially on a frame-by-frame basis. Thus a final file is composed of the data which is multiplexed the image data which is shot from multiple angles in each frame.
For example, in the case that only a single piece of image data among the image data from the multiple angles is modified in the final file, it is necessary to separate only the piece of image data that is modified from the final file. However, the processing for separating out only the image data to be modified is extremely difficult. Furthermore, even if the image data to be modified is successfully separated out, it is necessary to reconstruct the file in the aforementioned format after the image data has been modified. However, the process for this reconstruction is extremely difficult as well.
Meanwhile, the recording apparatuses record 2D image data and multiplexed 3D image data in a mixed state as a single file in some cases. In such a cases, there has been a problem in that the two pieces of image data cannot be easily distinguished from each other.